Cheftec

i recently purchased cheftec and was wondering if anyone had any experience with the program. i am fairly knowledgeable with computers and software. i'm not having too many problems with the software. it can be a powerful, useful tool in the kitchen, but everything comes with a price. i have been trying to import my list from my vendors (esysco and US foods) and cannot. i called the company and they said i had to send them files from my vendors so that they could program there formats in to use them with the program but its $400 a vendor and i already paid about a grand for the program and im not interested in spending another $800. anyone know of a way that i can edit the format that they have on the program? or any other way around this for that matter? thanks in advance

I don't own the software but I have heard that you can import files if they are formatted in HTML. Thanks for the post. I might have been interested in purchasing it at some point in the future but, if you can't import files, it's far too expensive for what you're getting.

My failures in life are few. The most blatant of these is my attempts at retirement. I've studied the process carefully but cannot begin to understand how it is done.

well i will agree with you about the expense. i have only had the program for about a week and wish i would have done some research on programs but the owner of the restaurant had an older version of cheftec that US foods gave him for free and he liked it and he wanted to update and just bought it so now i have it to use. he lost most of his information on the computer before i started and im just starting to back everything up and put in for the first time so i dont know about as far as the import of the recipies and what not. like i said, it is a powerful tool but i dont think the price of it quite justifys what you get. i still have a lot to learn about using it btu if anyone has any questions about it feel free to ask and ill let you know about it since i have it before someone else decides to go out and buy it.

awful service

I have the latest version of cheftec software. Software is not bad. But they have terrible customer support and sale strategy. You pay hundreds of dollars to buy software and each time you call, they try to sell another things. It's rediculous. You pay hundreds of dollars for customer support, however, their support is very limited and if they help you more than 3-4 times they think that for that money you got more than enough support. If you call sales department, they answer right away, however, if you call customer support you'll never contact a support person directly. You have to leave a message and they'll never call you back.
Software is good, but their service is terribly bad. I spend so much time to set up software but I am thinking of buying different software now.

I understand if you're able to get invoices from your vendors in an excel file or CSV, you can import invoice data yourself for no charge. It's a matter of having your invoice data oriented to sync with Cheftec's import manager parameters. I'm working on this now and was wondering if anyone out there has experience doing this.

I've used ChefTec since 1999, and coincidentally have had a love/hate relationship with it for that exact same length of time.

For the price, it is probably a good value, but only if you know how to import vendor order guides without having to pay the annual cost to Culinary Software. At the same time that it can provide accurate and timely costing, it can also do nutrient analysis of your recipes. Let me give you all an example of this.

A few weeks ago a chef from a popular country club here in the Phoenix, AZ area asked me to help him come up with 15 or so recipes under 500 calories that he offer to his membership. I had never met him, and to this date have yet to meet him. I was able ' far exceed his expectations' (his words), and give both recipe cost and nutrient analysis in the same ChefTec report. The key to this success was that he had given me standardized recipes in his kitchen measures, either by weight or fluid measure. It took hardly any time at all, and with just a few emails back and forth, I was able to send him back PDF files that he was able to use to present to both the membership and to the president of his management company.

Granted, I was able to do this very quickly, but much of the success was due to his use of standardized recipes with accurate yields and measurements. A small measure of success I guess goes to me and knowledge of ChefTec gained over the past 14 years.

The customer service and support from the ChefTec organization is for each to measure on their own. If you're willing to pay upwards of $400 yearly for support, I suppose the support would be pretty good. The only reason one might fault user support is that it is not as widely distributed as say a program like Microsoft Excel that has millions of users with dozens of books and thousands of internet references and resources available.

i recently purchased cheftec and was wondering if anyone had any experience with the program. i am fairly knowledgeable with computers and software. i'm not having too many problems with the software. it can be a powerful, useful tool in the kitchen, but everything comes with a price. i have been trying to import my list from my vendors (esysco and US foods) and cannot. i called the company and they said i had to send them files from my vendors so that they could program there formats in to use them with the program but its $400 a vendor and i already paid about a grand for the program and im not interested in spending another $800. anyone know of a way that i can edit the format that they have on the program? or any other way around this for that matter? thanks in advance